Al Jolson Gets Off-Broadway Tribute

MARK EVANS

Published 7:00 pm, Tuesday, October 1, 2002

Associated Press Writer

NEW YORK (AP) _ The former vaudeville performer whose unique voice and sheer magnetism made him America's most popular _ and richest _ entertainer in the 1920s and early 1930s is making a theatrical comeback.

While it's not exactly Al Jolson who opened this week at New York's Century Center, Stephen Mo Hanan comes pretty close. The talented actor, who has been honing this role in other theater pieces since 1998, seems at times to truly be channeling the famed performer in "Jolson and Company."

The musical isn't without its flaws, and Jolson fans may leave a little unsatisfied. Told in a dozen or so flashback scenes, it's a fairly shallow slice of a life and career that indelibly marked American stage, music and film history.

The narrative unfolds from a fictitious 1949 radio interview at Broadway's Winter Garden Theatre _ a year before Jolson's death _ during which key moments in his life are musically re-enacted.

This episodic form lends itself to predictability, and at times the show borders on becoming a history lecture. In these moments, Hanan, who co-wrote the show with Jay Berkow, tends to compensate by abrasively overacting.

That said, there are enough moments when the actor takes a deep breath and brings out sadness, warmth and humor beneath the overpowering Jolson ego. And it is here where the musical shines brightest.

Hanan, whose strong voice more than fills the fairly small theater, has been given able support from two other cast members. Nancy Anderson plays a host of distinct female characters, including Jolson's wives and love interests, his mother and Mae West; and Robert Ari, who plays Jolson's strict, deeply religious Jewish father and several other characters.

Particularly poignant is a scene at the end of the first act. In it, Jolson, flashing with anger and pain after a harsh scolding, slowly applies the blackface for which audiences have come to know him. It's a picture of a man hiding from himself _ and a delicate and sad rendition of the sentimental "My Mammy" ensues before the curtain falls.

The show treads gingerly on Jolson's use of the black makeup, making the points, both debatable, that he used the persona mainly to mask emotional pain and that he had admired black culture. As used by lesser performers of Jolson's era, the blackface served as little more than crude racial stereotyping.

The musical's key moment comes as the curtain rises and Jolson _ then the 8-year-old Asa Yoelson _ is at his mother's deathbed.

Under Berkow's direction and musical staging, this moment offers a glimpse at what the show depicts as Jolson's main motivation: a desperate clinging to the stage and audience to overcome the loss of his mother. Many of the ensuing scenes deal with his troubled relationships with women _ Jolson was married four times.

But not all is bleak. A couple of scenes in which Jolson and Mae West trade wits are terrifically entertaining. Hanan and Anderson's rendition of "April Showers" is both funny and touching.

Jolson's stage career led him to a starring role in the early "talkie" film, "The Jazz Singer," in 1927. Within a few years, he was the world's highest paid entertainer.

His career suffered as the 1930s wore on, but his fame resurfaced in the late 1940s, highlighted by a tour of Korea to entertain American troops. His life ended abruptly in 1950, at age 64, with a heart attack.

While "Jolson and Company" may not convey all the nuances of a complex man, it is a mostly admirable effort _ a stylish, spirited and credible recollection of a man whose ad-libbed line, "You ain't heard nothin' yet," befitted a life that was an important part of 20th-century American entertainment history.